Too Cool for my Own Good.

Too Cool for my Own Good. {Chapter 3}

“We’ve arranged a taxi for you, Miss Glass.”

I blinked my tired eyes open, feeling my senses coming back to me once a warm hand shook me awake. My eyelids wearily opened after much of a fight inside myself on whether or not I should open them or not, but I eventually fought back and found the energy to have them pried open with what little will power I possessed. Pulling myself off the hardened hospital bench, I rubbed my head, allowing my sense of sight to grow more acute as the faded hospital lights that clogged my vision started to settle.

“A-Ah? Oh, th-thanks…blob.” I slurred, seeing the woman in front of me as nothing but a conglomerate mass of color, smudged like an artist’s pallet who had mixed their colors together.

Once my vision settled in, I could see Gabriella’s warm brown eyes staring at me, confused as to my calling her “blob.” I shook it off and picked myself off my uncomfortable seating arrangements as I dusted off my jeans.

“Why don’t I show you out?” Gabriella suggested, smiling genially at me. It was the kind of smile that adults gave kids to sugar coat the bad things at the most unthinkable and tragic of times. It made me feel refreshingly young again in a sort of bittersweet, pain-in-the-ass sort of way. However, my mother had never quite been one for sugar coating. But on the outside world, where everyone was the same, they had always treated me as if I couldn’t handle the punches that the world delivered as if its fist was coated with diamond spikes. But I knew myself, and I knew my weaknesses and strengths, and I definitely was sure of the fact that the ability to take bad news maturely was part of me. I hadn’t grown up in a Hitlarian household, but I’d had my fare share of heartbreaks that had been dealt with a bat of the eyelashes and the flash of a smile, and I’d known eventually whether to distinguish the inevitably hopeless from the times when there was actually faith.

And I knew, looking into Gabriella’s artificially smile, caked on with the staged glint in her eye, that this wasn’t going to end well.

“Can’t I see my mother?” I questioned a bit harshly, feeling myself pull away from her hovering hand over my shoulder. Why was it that adults always felt the need to console teenagers and kids through means of touch? If I had wanted that, I would have gone crying to the creepy man down the street with the receding hairline and missing teeth who gives out Nyquil popsicles on Halloween

Gabriella’s smile faltered like someone who’d tripped on a rickety staircase, “O-Oh, well, she’s in Intensive Care at the moment, and I believe it’d be in your best interest if you…”

“Waited?” I finished for her, frowning.

She drew her fake smile into a wan, weary line. For someone who worked in a hospital, ol’ Gabby wasn’t too good at delivering bad news. She patted me softly on the back, and I didn’t quite feel the energy to crudely withdraw myself from partaking in any sympathetic activity like I normally would.

“I’m sorry, dear. I can get you a complementary soda if you’d like.” She suggested, smiling reassuringly.

Pursing my lips, I shook my head gravely. I wasn’t exactly in the mood for soda at the moment.

“Alright then,” she sighed, running a hand through her dark chocolate hair that flowed down her new, crisp, white nurse shirt and touched just above the small of her back. “I’ll show you out then,” She said, sounding as if it was more of a question than a general statement.

I nodded, but faltered as we began to walk, “W-Wait, shouldn’t I get some of my things from home?”

Gabriella shook her head, “I’m afraid there’s no time, dear. The taxi we’ve arranged for you is running on a tight shift…we were lucky to get you one at all.”